Too Much

Too much shit to do, and yet, I feel like I am capable of doing more. #^@#^@#

On a side note, anyone "get" vista or hear good/bad things about it? I recently have gotten Office 2007 and I like it much better. Really pleasing to the eye, quality stuff. I'm sure Vista is going to have the same type of feel, but I really see no point in getting it.

I never did want to get XP though and look how that turned out.

Brain Food

Here's an article all about consciousness. Quick firing and to the point.

"...and the feature they find least controversial is the one that many people outside the field find the most shocking. Francis Crick called it "the astonishing hypothesis"--the idea that our thoughts, sensations, joys and aches consist entirely of physiological activity in the tissues of the brain. Consciousness does not reside in an ethereal soul that uses the brain like a PDA; consciousness is the activity of the brain."

Buying a New Car?

Interesting tactic. Not to mention, extremely easy and fast.

Center Yourself

If you got the time, which I'm sure you DON'T, you'll want to take a look at this. (Ram Dass - Be Here Now)

Funny Shit

Here. I really don't know what to say other than I couldn't read it and not laugh for one reason or another. Joe cracks me up. If you haven't heard it, you should look up his DMT 'speech' on Jim Brewers radio show. Quite interesting to say the least...

EDIT: Here's a link a video of the radio show.

Faith/Fear?

One might say that they have no faith. This is quite hard for me to believe. I do not fully believe that anyone can really live without faith of some type. I assume it would be possible to live in fear constantly, but I am getting ahead of myself here.

I believe that when any choice or obstacle is encountered, there is always a hidden choice that many might just take passively. To me, there always seems to be the choice of either faith or fear. One may choose to live their life in the fear that the worst things that they can imagine might happen, or they could CHOOSE to have faith that the outcome will be positive.

Jumping back, there is a possibility that one could live completely in fear and have no faith. Honestly, I can not see how someone could not live without a sliver of faith within them. Nothing would ever be accomplished. Would this even be considered living?

Generally, I believe that there are no positives when making decisions on the basis of fear. There is one, not positive, but "upside" if you will. This is the fact that when you live in fear, if anything negative happens, you will not be surprised and your ego will not be "hurt". This however will only dig your negatively charged ego deeper into the depths of "hell". Your negative bias will be validated, thus making it stronger. (ego=counterproductive. That's a topic for another day.)

Conversely, if you make decisions based on faith, your ego could possibly be shattered. For one that might hold his ego dear, this could be too much of a gamble. Although the ego is at stake, there is much more to be gained through the practice(?) of faith. When there is faith behind an action, I believe that a positive bias is used and the likelihood of a positive outcome is MUCH greater.

This concept of faith/fear kind of runs into the concept of the psychological term: self fulfilling prophecy. I had always thought this theory was complete(90%) bullshit upon first learning about it. Quite interesting.

Before I came to the conclusion that every decision I made had a sort of 'faith' attached to it, I believed that I have little to no faith in my life. After I made this observation, I noticed that along with having faith, there was a large amount of fear within me too. This fear is what hinders me from being more self actualized. I need to eliminate this fear.

Any ideas greatly appreciated.

Funny

This one goes out to PK. I hate bastards that park like that.

I find it funny that I already do the majority of the things on this list save a few. Mainly, the *cough* preventative maintenance on the car...

Ones that I found especially important and deserve focus were:

4. Do nothing you have to lie about later. (majority of stress eliminated just from this)

38. Focus on understanding rather than on being under stood, on loving rather than on being loved. (gives a substantial amount of self worth and humility since you depend on yourself rather than OTHERS for validation)

Just got out of my psychology class on stereotyping and prejudice. It looks like a really interesting class. I've only taken one intro psych class before this one, and had a pretty good experience. The teacher was great, but being such a big class, the material seemed almost dumbed down for the crowd 'dumbness' factor. We'll see how this class pans out.

God Damn It!

They said they would save it!!!!!
::goes on a mission to kill whomever this "Blogger" entity is...::

In the meantime, you'll have to get used to the changes. ::shrug::

PS: Apparently they did save it... Sorry Blogger/Google :(
::cowers in a corner fearing the backhand::

First Day Back

First day back at school and I am coding in VisualBasic again? This struck me as being quite counter productive. I remember coding VB back in high school. While there are some definite advantages to VB (mainly simplicity), I really don't want to learn any more of it unless I really HAVE to. I like the complexity of completely textual based languages because of the flexibility and customizable nature. I feel like I am studying a dead-end language when coding in VB. I don't really think there is much substance that can really be obtained I/O wise using this language. Ah, just so depressing to start back and go through a tutorial like you've never programmed in your life before. Such an ego shattering experience ya know? I'd just like to do some work that aimed for better results rather than these simple 2-3 step bullshit processes.

On another note, being back from break is somewhat relaxing. I did have a great break though. I was able to catch up with a bunch of great friends and see whats going on with them. Quite a rewarding experience in general.

Being back at home this year made me realize that my family seems to be doing better as time moves on. Not that I ever felt that my family was in any type of massive disarray, but being home allowed me to see how well everyone is doing. My dad seems to be doing pretty well, albeit more stressed out because of his new(ish) job. He seems to be in good spirits. Emily seems to be doing her own (high school) thing, but I really think she's got some great things in store for her in the future. She's such a bright person. Alyssa, being at the academy is such a great thing in general, but the aspect of her becoming (seemingly, correct me if I'm wrong Alyssa ;) ) more accepting of herself is quite the achievement in my book. I hope she has the strength to overcome her own worst enemy, herself :). My mom seems to be in great spirits these days. I'm not really sure of how her work is going, but around the house she's as cheerful as ever, which makes me very happy to see her like that. One person that I am very proud of is Eric. What a turn around both physically, and more importantly, mentally. Such a great attitude can do such great things. Keep on discovering brother, know that I am very proud of your self discipline and will to change for the better.

But not all can be going well, there is one person which seems to be on the low side these days. And this person is Paco. He just recently, in the past few months, seems to have picked up a series of quirks in his behavior. Kind of weird since he is somewhat middle aged (6 years). Oh well, I'm sure he's at least having fun in his reality ;) .

Well, I really just hope everyone reading this had as great of a break, if not greater, than mine, and I wish you all a great year and years to come.